Marathon tragedy fails to help death-penalty push

BOSTON -- The House killed a budget amendment reinstating the death penalty Tuesday, with area lawmakers split on whether the Boston Marathon bombings should sway the Legislature's vote.

"I would assume that with everything that's happened, with public-safety people putting their lives on the line, we would feel that we owe it to them to protect them," state Rep. James Miceli, the Wilmington Democrat who filed the amendment, said in an interview after the vote.

The amendment, filed before the Boston tragedy that killed three people and injured more than 260, would have imposed the death penalty for murders of public officials, including police, firefighters, and corrections officers.

MIT campus police officer Sean Collier, a Wilmington native, was shot to death Thursday night, allegedly by the bombing suspects, as they fled the campus and touched off a massive chase, gunfight and search that lasted nearly 24 hours in nearby Watertown before suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was left dead and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was captured.

On a 119 to 38 vote, the House rejected attaching Miceli's amendment to budget deliberations and sent it to the Judiciary Committee to study the death penalty's economic impacts. But some legislators, including Miceli and Rep. Shauna O'Connell, R-Taunton, were skeptical the Legislature would ever see the study's results.

"There will be no study; if there is it will be a one-page report," Miceli said.

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Miceli, who also filed separate death-penalty legislation in January -- which also goes to committee for study -- said he has filed legislation five or six times. None passed.

"I'm not optimistic, but I'll continue to fight," Miceli said.

The Legislature has rebuffed other efforts to reinstate the death penalty. Former Gov. Mitt Romney filed legislation in 2005 that would have imposed the death penalty for murders of police officers, terrorism or torture.

Massachusetts, which abolished the death penalty in 1984, is one of 17 states without it. New Hampshire is the only New England state that has a death penalty.

"The notion that bringing the death penalty to Massachusetts is somehow going to deter police officers from being killed, judges from being killed, it doesn't add up," Rep. Paul Heoux, D-Attleboro said.

Supporters hoped the Boston marathon bombings, which killed three people, and the death of an MIT police officer, would encourage support for the bill.

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could be tried under the federal death penalty. However, even if Massachusetts reinstated the death penalty, Tsarnaev would not fall under its provision because his alleged crimes occurred before the possible passage of the law.

DiNatale thought the death penalty could narrowly pass in the Legislature "given the emotions of the time right now," but acknowledged it probably could not get past the governor's veto.

However, Rep. Sheila Harrington, R-Groton, said the Legislature should avoid "kneejerk reactions" to the bombings and not let emotions drive legislative decisions.

"What we're holding in balance is someone's life," Harrington said during the House debate.

Rep. Kevin Murphy, D-Lowell, said he is opposed to the death penalty regardless of the bombings and pointed to cases where the wrong person has been convicted due to tainted evidence.

"With what we have seen in the drug crime labs and other crime labs, I could never, ever allow evidence like that to come against a person facing the death penalty," Murphy said in an interview.

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